Williston Park’s Village Board voted 4-1 last Monday to pierce the state’s tax levy cap for the fourth straight year, approving a budget with a 2-percent, $96,085 tax levy increase.
After publicly presenting the $6 million budget and authorizing itself to override the tax cap April 4, the village shifted some general contingency money into a reserve fund for road repairs to avoid bonding for projects that can get expensive, Trustee William Carr said.
“It’s the major complaint you hear from residents,” he said. “Everything else is pretty smooth sailing, but the roads — people want see beautiful roads and they cost a lot of money.”
Trustee Teresa Thomann, the sole vote against the budget at the April 18 meeting, said she thought that was a good step toward justifying piercing the tax cap.
But overall, she said, the budget did not lay out enough specific projects or plans to merit raising taxes beyond the 0.12-percent, $9,300 increase the village was allowed under state law.
“It’s the residents’ money and absent a real need or specific plan, I felt that we could find that money in the budget and stay within the tax cap,” Thomann said.
Williston Park has many roads that have not been repaired in six or seven years, and others have gone longer without updates, Carr said. The village will have to have an engineer evaluate the roadways and develop a plan for repairs, he said.
Allocating money to a reserve fund will help the village avoid taking out bonds for the repairs, Carr said. The village borrowed $2 million and used $225,000 in state money for a two-mile road repair project that was completed in 2013.
Thomann said Carr suggested the savings in response to her concerns about the tax cap.
She thinks the village is going in a good direction financially, she said, but she “really felt that the difference in monies of what we’re increasing versus staying in the tax cap was not necessary to exceed it.”
Carr said residents have been more concerned about parking and roads than piercing the tax cap.
“They do address their concerns of the village with us, and the budget has not been one of them,” he said.
The $6,035,365 budget reflects a 2.64-percent increase over last year’s adopted budget and allows the village to maintain its current staff, services and equipment needs, village Mayor Paul Ehrbar has said.
The tax levy, about 81 percent of the village’s revenue, is set to rise to $4,889,778 from $4,793,693.
A net $65,857 hike in employee benefit costs accounts for about 42.5 percent of the $155,085 budget increase.
The tax levy hike is the second-lowest in Williston Park since the tax cap law took effect in 2012.
Trustees approved a $5.39 million 2012-2013 budget with a 1.96-percent levy increase, which fell under the tax levy cap in its first year.
